Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Geometry Of A Putt

I'm only a few days removed from when I ordered and watched David Orr's 'Green Reading 201' video with Mark Sweeney from AimPoint Golf. A couple of the key points of the video are understanding green reading and understanding where to aim.

One of the things that is sort of talked about on the video is the 'Geometry of a Putt' as shown in Orr's diagram above. In particular, you should never take a putt that breaks and aim it at the apex of the break.

Why?

Essentially, when you hit the putt as the putt starts rolling it immediately start rolling towards where the break is.

For instance, let's take a look at the diagram. It's a 20 foot putt that breaks left about 3 inches. Immediately when the ball starts to roll, it will now start rolling/turning/bending to the left.

So, IN ORDER TO HIT THE BALL ONLINE ON A CURVED PUTT, you NEED TO AIM ABOVE THE APEX OF WHERE THE LINE OF THE PUTT CURVES.

When you aim above the apex and stroke the putt appropriately with the right speed, the ball will then go on the line of that putt.

When reading Dave Pelz's books, one of the things he stresses is that amateurs do not play enough break. I don't think Pelz is wrong in that premise, but I think this can be confusing. I think the way that Pelz explains it, the golfer is more likely to start more break instead of just aiming above the apex of the line. And I believe if you start reading more break with Pelz's method, then you can run into some big time issues with speed. Furthermore, Pelz believes that the 'optimal speed' of a putt is 17" past the cup, something debunked completely by Geoff Mangum, as that is usually much harder than the actual optimal speed of a putt. So if you're reading more break, you need to hit is softer in order to make the putt. But if you're hitting it harder with Pelz's 'optimal speed' and reading more break, you're going to miss too high.

Again, for the Orr Golf video and other videos, check them out at http://www.orrgolf.com/premvids.htm